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Deeplinks

The president is unconstitutionally wiretapping the telephone and Internet communications of millions of ordinary Americans. Telecom giants want to block lawsuits like EFF's case against AT&T and get immunity for their illegal collaboration with the president's program.

And now Congress is threatening to let them get away with it.

Stand with EFF as we launch a new campaign to take on Congress and stop the spying. Tell the government to stop surveillance of Americans' communications without a warrant.

For at least six years, President Bush has authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to conduct dragnet surveillance on our domestic telecommunications networks, vacuuming up the private communications of millions of ordinary Americans with no warrants or other meaningful oversight.

Under the PATRIOT Act, NSLs allow the FBI to spy on Americans' telephone, Internet, and other records without any court approval and regardless of whether the target is suspected of a crime. With a single piece of paper, the FBI could force your ISP to turn over detailed information about your Internet communications, including the Web sites you've visited and the email addresses you've written to. Worse still, an NSL recipient is barred from notifying anyone else about the demand.

If all goes as planned, HR 811 -- the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2007, introduced by New Jersey Representative Rush Holt -- will finally come to a floor vote in the House of Representatives this week, likely on Thursday or Friday. Despite speculation to the contrary, it is not at all clear whether the bill will pass or, even if it does, whether a substantively similar companion bill will then pass the Senate. Like it or not, with election officials arguing that they're running out of time to implement wholesale changes, this likely amounts to Congress's only attempt to make any serious improvements to the nation's election procedures ahead of the 2008 presidential election.

On Friday, the Administration filed yet another court brief contending that the case against AT&T for its cooperation in the warrantless wiretapping program must be dismissed, for fear that the bad guys might figure out the well known fact that AT&T had indeed participated. In response to the Director of National Intelligence's
ex=1345608000&en=4e8428cf3d46306c&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss">admission (transcript) that the companies who "were being sued" "had assisted" the wiretapping program, the Administration attempts to minimize the admission:

The big news in the machinima world this week has been Microsoft's new "Game Content Usage Rules," which is a license that explicitly authorizes the creation of machinima (and other derivative works) using Microsoft game content. As far as I know, this is the first time a major commercial game vendor has created a "machinima license" to facilitate this exciting new genre. (Check out This Spartan Life's interview of Malcolm McLaren for an example of the amazing things machinima creators are doing using Halo.)

The answer, as we lawyers like to say, is complicated. And, for that complicated answer, there is no one better qualified than Jennifer Granick, the Stanford Law School professor who obtained the DMCA exemption in 2006 for cell phone unlocking.

Rather than give the full exposition, I'll just encourage you to read her recent explanation at WIRED.